


Persistence of Memory

by Ladycat



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-12
Updated: 2014-02-12
Packaged: 2018-01-12 03:01:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1181134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladycat/pseuds/Ladycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Atlantis always made him feel so stupid. Innocent and naive, there to be coddled instead of partnered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Persistence of Memory

“—stop it, don’t—”

It wasn’t like before, most of the befores, sinking into a soft blue glow like he sinks in through clouds, gradients of mist cold and perfect, slip, slip, slip all around him. It was tighter now, bands of fire worming under and inside of him, through muscle and bone to send sharp, sharp cold that burned like snow left too long against unprotected skin, freezing fire that iced through his veins, locking him in place.

“—up, dammit, I _know_ , but we’ve got to—”

He couldn’t feel _himself_ , breath and frame, dark hair, dark skin, dark eyes that grew more shadowed every day. There was nothing but hard around him, metal and silicone, plastic no twentieth century Earth-human could produce, wrapping around his heart, his groin, stifling the red-hot beat that shouldn’t be stopped, the pulse of his mind cut into bits. 

He thought he might be screaming, but he couldn’t be sure. There was too much to do, too many drones to propel towards the sky, an enemy lurking unseen beyond the thinnest of atmospheres, waiting to be targeted, destroyed, removed.

“— _working_ , Rodney, they’re being dest—”

“—if it kills him!”

He wasn’t really aware, now. Snatches of voices faded in and out, a hand unsteady on the radio dial, until the sounds started reading like text on a page, black on stark white, with emotions like accents, colors to highlight pitch and volume, different fonts left bland and meaningless against the strident, stentorian fear it represented. Images of the room pendulum-swung, suddenly in focus and all blue and blue and blurring pink as people moved around him, the chair hard and frigid against his back, his buttocks, his aching, burning legs—then blurred away, wiped clean and distant by the steady hum and hiss, the constant feel of _mine mine mine_ in the back of his head, humming through his body to leave him stuck, unmoving where he was.

“—have to stop, Rodney, you—”

“—than baboons! Get out, all of you—”

John knew that voice, knew the way fear turned into blinding anger, red splotches like a Rorschach, gun-splatter on the wall. He wanted to reach out for it, but couldn’t. He couldn’t move, couldn’t think, could only let himself fall down deeper into a metallic hum that was almost female, almost warm, a perverted parody of a mother’s lullaby. _Hush and sleep_ , it told him, sticky and grasping, oil lying slick and unmoving at the top of the shifting, ever changing ocean, on by never in. _Stay with me._

He hoped he was screaming. He wanted to scream, fighting against bonds he couldn’t sense, with a body he couldn’t command. There was just the enemy, shattered into flaming bits above his sky. Some hurled their way to the surface, falling stars he caught, juggling, preventing them from reaching the land below. She didn’t like that, didn’t want to expend the energy when there was so much to show him. So many things that would glow and dance for him, a child’s mobile, hung to distract, to entertain, for a mind too young to understand anything else.

Atlantis always made him feel so _stupid_. Innocent and naive, there to be coddled instead of partnered.

He was only here out of desperation, sinking in as far as his human—so human, so wrong, but _close_ —mind would allow, frantic to do what had to be done, to make the sacrifices that had to be made because that was what he did, what and who he _was_ , as fundamental as untamable hair and eyes that could never make up their mind as to color—

“—hear me? I said get out, all of you, _get out right now!”_

Shouting cut through the flat, computerized hum, too loud to be blocked, too much to be given meaning. It was just sound, overwhelming, and he could feel himself slipping. There was no way to fight, _nothing_ to fight, just that damned, damned humming and the knowledge that the enemy was still there, could come back, he had to be ready, had to be able, had to be _there_.

“Sheppard!”

That registered, fog-horn brilliant with a cartoon wind sweeping straight through him. He reached out towards it, wanting to soothe the anger, deflect it away before anyone else leveled complaints, before a bridge was irreparably broken because he _could_ , when this angry, and not give a damn. That was John’s job, what he did when he wasn’t doing his own, and he _knew_ that voice.

“—hate you, you asshole, you stupid, useless mother _fucker_ —”

Between the two of them they used words like paper clips, randomly chosen, nearest to hand, but thrown with precision, the meanings immaterial beyond the reaction. John ignored the cursing, the furious hatred, because it wasn’t hatred that made him scream so loud, crescendoes painted lurid red on perforated white.

“—go with me, bitch? Because I promise you, I will _shut everything down_ , make you beg like the disease-ridden whore you are, if you don’t—”

Sound ran together, puddling like Dali’s image of time, forever slinking towards oblivion. A defense mechanism, he knew, a chance to hide him, hide everything, to keep him wrapped up in a cocoon of welcome frosted with inhumane need, inhuman concerns because it wasn’t human, didn’t _understand_ —

“—win!” Rodney snarled, suddenly clear in front of him, hands like branding irons against meat and bone and skin— _shoulders_ , his shoulders—breathing hard enough to make John wince, breathless for all the wrong reasons, and there. _Here_.

Rodney’s eyes were crazy, standing out from their sockets as they moved over John’s face, searching for who knew what. “Are you there? You better be there, because I may be ready and willing, but I’m not sure I want to fight a _city_ for you, even if I will, because I like it here, I don’t want to leave here, or leave _you_ here, but no way was I going to let it keep you.”

John’s reintroduction to his own body was painful. Everything hurt, even his eyelashes, and no matter how much he wanted to move he didn’t think he’d be able to. “Mc—”

“Shut up, shut up, yes, I get that it’s you and let me just.” He pulled away, fingers lingering as long as possible before they disappeared entirely, transferring their attention to the cot he was fussing with, opening it out into something blessedly, wonderfully soft. John glared at the cot, feeling oddly betrayed and jealous.

“Here.”

John blinked, Rodney’s face looming huge and sweat-shiny above him. “Whass going on?”

“You have to move very slowly, okay? Carson was worried about something irrelevant but troubling and you look—” Rodney stopped, swallowed, then forced a smile so horrible to look at that John almost didn’t. Almost. “You need to be off that thing.”

Off sounded excellent, so John obediently pushed limbs that still felt odd and detached, too heavy against the effortless glide over pathways and circuits. He wasn’t good at moving them, but Rodney was efficient and brusque, as close as he could come to gentle, easing John off metal that clung to his clothes, his skin, releasing with suction-pop sounds that hurt, a millimeter at a time.

The bed was soft. Cool and squishy, Carson’s memory foam, thick enough that John could sink down into something that gave, something that welcomed him without any response on its part, just simple, quiet acceptance. Rodney stripped him without a word, batting his hands away when John laboriously lifted them to help, arranging and rearranging John like a doll.

Redressed in soft, warm clothes he couldn’t quite identify, John gratefully accepted the blanket Rodney wrapped around him and tried not to be pathetic. He hated being sick, hated even more the soul-numbing drain that came with using the chair, worse and worse each time. This had been the absolute, the closest he’d come to just never opening his eyes again, and he was abruptly shivering hard enough that his teeth clacked, sharp pains that traveled up his jaw to lodge in his sinuses, a reminder he despised and clung to with equal fervor.

“Hey.” Rodney rarely did tender, but he _could_. It’d been a surprise to both of them. “It’s okay, it’s just shock.” He didn’t _sound_ okay, but his body was warm and solid, familiar as the air John tried desperately to breathe steadily as it wrapped around him, joining him on the bed, a pillow and comforter both. “It’s okay.”

“Not,” John said, and barely recognized his own voice through the quiver, the washed-out emptiness. “It’s not.”

“No, okay, you’re right. It’s not. But will be.” Rodney’s body was always at odds with his mind, his mouth; it stayed soft, comfortable for John to collapse against, no matter how awkward or ruthlessly finite Rodney’s words. Big hands, big arms, bigger than John’s and harder for all he was a little stronger, wrapped around tightly enough that John squeaked, swallowing back the noise because there was humiliation and then _humiliation_.

“Relax, I made them leave.” Rodney’s voice burred into his ear, his jaw, lips soft whenever they brushed against skin. “Everyone’s kicked out, even Carson and his stupid, useless fretting. No one’s getting in until I say so.”

“Medical override,” John said. They’d installed that two years ago, Rodney and Radek programming feverishly despite being locked in the infirmary, desperate to get their coworkers out.

“ _Atlantis_ override,” Rodney shot back, tightening with anger. “The doors won’t open until I tell them to,” and when he said it like that, John had to believe him. Atlantis played favorites, plied the chosen few, but when push came to shove it was always Rodney who shoved hardest. He was the undisputed alpha, King of Atlantis, even if Atlantis forgot that as often as the rest of them did.

The reminders were always too damned painful.

It took effort, took fighting against Rodney’s hold, against his own useless body, but he managed it, turning like a landed fish, flop, flop, twist, until his body was lined up against Rodney’s: chest to chest, stomach to stomach, legs tangled together. His head buried in Rodney’s neck, breathing metal and musk, fear-sweat that had only just started to dry.

“Over?” he asked.

If Rodney’s hand shook as he lifted it, feather light against John’s hair as he stroked, neither one was going to mention it. “They’re all destroyed. We’re safe.”

No. No, no, and John pushed in harder, deeper, fusing them together because this was the only thing that was keeping him here, above the city instead of inside it, trapped among metal automatons that thought they were alive. Rodney’s breath whooshed in his chest with every inhalation. “Over?” he asked again, and didn’t care if he was begging.

Rodney’s hand stilled, then resumed, forehead to nape, detouring towards the ears, before starting all over again, pushing John’s hair until it made his scalp tingle. Felt good. “Yeah. It’s over.”

He’d have to let the others in soon, he knew. Carson at the very least, gate-keeper to the rest of the world, with its reports and questions and decisions that were John’s to make. But right then it was okay to stay where he was, bundled up against Rodney who would never let go, not unless John wanted him to.

John didn’t want him to.

“Hey,” he said, rough and wistful.

Rondey’s face bunched and crinkled, stubble painting his smile against John’s. “Hey. You okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay.”

“Well, then. That’s good. I guess.”

“Sure, McKay. It’s good.”

Later, much later, when Carson was let in through darkened doors, he didn’t ask Rodney to get up and give them space. He knew better.


End file.
